The Suicide Mission
by Smehur
Summary: I always wanted to know what the other fire team was doing during the attack on the Collector Base. This is how Garrus experienced the suicide mission.
1. Vulnerable

This was originally posted on Mass Effect Kink Meme, although I wrote it long before that. The whole premise behind retelling the Suicide Mission is suspicious at best; but since I've already written parts, I might as well show them. I might even be persuaded to continue and finish (hint: throw me a review).

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><p><strong>Vulnerable<strong>

The sensation of control returned to him in a flash of confusion. He could hear himself breathing with labor. Weakness in his muscles, dizziness in head. Memory of flying, no, of falling, falling through a wormhole, losing sense of weight, losing sense of self, going deeper, ever deeper into her. He could feel his heartbeat, shallow, rapid. How long has he been like this, suspended between worlds? A couple of seconds or a couple of minutes? Her face was flushed and so warm he could feel her heat shining on him. Sweat all over her forehead. Her eyes were wet as well. He struggled to remember the word, it had no equivalent in his tongue. _Tears_.

Distress, despair? That didn't make sense.

Unless it did.

He tried to speak, throat dry. He swallowed. "You ok?"

"Mhmmmm."

She smiled, she kissed him on the mouth, the touch of her lips soothed all his fears, the movement of her body sent his into another blissful spasm, an aftershock, flying again, no, falling, giving himself up, giving everything, everything! His hand was already entangled in her hair, he held her close, pressing his forehead against hers, his mouth against those soft, juicy lips. Her body surrendered and they trembled together once again.

He'd lost all sense of time. A couple of minutes or a couple of hours since they'd begun? He didn't want to move, but perhaps he was too heavy for her? As he made the motion to lift himself up, her grip on him tightened so he stayed. He wanted to know how she felt. Was it wise to ask? Chances were, she didn't feel the way he did. Nobody could. Not even he will ever feel like this again. He was falling apart. In a good way, but still. What had he expected? He couldn't remember. But it wasn't this.

Snuggling his nose into her neck, he took in her scent. If only they could stay like this forever, one being, complete. Perfect. Her hand moved up from where it had been resting on his waist, seeking out unplated skin, tickling, up against his side and shoulder, finally pressing the back of his neck, drawing him closer, ever closer.

Maybe she did feel the same way after all.

He propped himself up so he could look at her. There were still tears trickling from the angles of her eyes. Resting on his right arm, he touched her face with his left, smearing the tears, asking the question with his eyes.

She smiled, weakly, shook her head just a bit, he could see what a chore it was to move, a very familiar feeling. She started to speak but had to clear her throat first. He smiled.

"It's nothing," she whispered. "Don't worry."

By way of an answer, he dived into her neck again. If only he could consume her, breathe her in, or, even better, be consumed by her, become vapor and enter her every pore, so that they could never be divided again. His rational mind was rising in critique of the childish fantasy but he was still high on euphoria, and could shut it up, just this once, let me not _think_, let me just wallow in _feeling_.

#

A rude mechanical voice broke the silence, pulling him back to unwelcoming reality.

"Shepard. ETA to Omega Four Relay: fifteen minutes."

There was his answer: they were in communion for an hour. It was difficult to believe. He'd been as good as unconscious at least half that time, flying in ecstasy. He'd never thought it could happen with a human, not even with Shepard. Not like this.

And now it was over. He could feel her heartbeat speeding up, her chest heaving, but she didn't make a move to get up. A minute passed, two.

"It's time, Shepard," he said, choosing the gentlest notes.

Her lips found his left ear, and the words came on the tiniest of whispers: "I don't want to go."

He held her even closer. Could she feel his heartbeat through the plating on his chest? It was all for her.

"I don't want _you_ to go," she whispered, a hint of despair on her breath.

It was a rare thing, to witness Shepard lacking in determination, and he was honored to borrow some to her. This once, he was the stronger one.

"We must," he said, pushing himself up, forcing the painful separation. This time, he didn't let her stop him. Leaving her exposed and trembling and radiating all the heat that they'd accumulated together, leaving her so _vulnerable_, seemed like the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. He couldn't bear to look at her, and strode away as quickly as he could. The bathroom door was too slow to open and he hit it with the back of his hand.

When he got out, he was himself again, and he was relieved to see she was as well. Wrapped in a sheet, she was typing into her terminal.

"Five minutes," she said. "Think I'll make it?"

"If you hurry."

She slipped by him, letting the sheet drop, and disappeared in the bathroom. They didn't make eye contact. Whatever it was, whatever had happened, it would have to wait. Perhaps an eternity.


	2. Effectual

Thank you, dear readers, for posting reviews. Keep them coming! But just so you know, I'll appreciate critique as well; if there's something you don't like, please feel free to tell me.

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><p><strong>Effectual<strong>

Garrus hated to admit it, but he only started feeling the absence of the human crew now that the Normandy finally got a taste of true action. Shepard had assigned the other specialists to battle stations best suited to their abilities, and he was to operate the weaponry on his own.

_Shepard._

Lightning fast, the image of her soft, pliant body writhing in his arms passed through his mind, eclipsing everything, and his stomach stiffened all the way down. Garrus wondered, and not for the last time, if sleeping with her _just before_ this crazy run was such a good idea after all. But instead of sobering him up, the thought threw more images at him, things he'd hardly been aware of at the time but now they were coming back to him, setting his face on fire.

_Tell me what to do._

_Touch it._

He shook the memory away, trying to focus on the immense accretion disk shimmering from the holo on his console, the distant central object blinking suspiciously through the debris. Of course he had EDI run a spectral analysis as soon as they fell out of the relay, but the spectrum was dominated by disk continuum and lined with artificial emissions, which were of far greater interest than some astrophysical rarity.

The Collectors were hiding on the edge of the disk. Garrus had to give credit where it was due: it was a brilliant idea, and the plentiful flotsam dancing in barely directed motion wherever EDI's scanners turned testified to it. Joker was doing a damn good job evading the debris but as superior as the inertial dampeners of the new Normandy were, every now and then Garrus had to latch onto the railing to keep his balance.

"We've got company," Shepard said through the common channel and Garrus had a split second to register how alien the familiar voice sounded to him now, after he had heard her undertones. But then something hit the ship and he listened to the sounds, he knew what the sounds meant even before EDI streamed the status report to the visor of his helmet. It wasn't a particle weapon so the kinetic barriers were useless; but the upgraded plating held. There were no cracking noises, no hissing noises, and indeed, EDI confirmed the pressure in all compartments was still optimal.

He fought for balance over the console. "Tactical!"

As soon as the overlay blinked over the visual, he tapped into it, ignoring EDI's selection of primary targets. A flood of adrenaline took him for a ride; it had been a long time since he'd felt this strong, this effectual. EDI confirmed the firing solution and the deep rumble of the secondary cannons agreed with his mood. One red dot blinked out; two. Nice work, Vakarian. Still, there were many more left, and they were smart enough to attempt to hide in the Normandy's blind spots. Another shot reverberated through the plating, and again, failed to make a dent. Nice work, Normandy.

"Hold on, people," Joker said. "Starting evasive maneuvers."

Garrus clawed into the railing just in time for a series of nauseating drops, decelerations and seemingly random turns. The Normandy took more shots and there it was, finally, the sound of a hull breach somewhere below, in their underbelly. That shook the ship alright and he lost his footing.

"Shit," he muttered, getting on his feet and struggling to find a stable position next to the gunnery console. EDI was taking the drones down at a good pace, but Garrus had ideas of his own. He overrode her solution, recalibrating the secondary cannons for increased precision at the cost of targeting speed and it gave results. "Yes!" he hissed as another pair, no, a triplet of red dots vaporized from the tactical.

"Someone's having fun," Shepard's voice said into his earpiece, followed shortly by a deafening outburst from her assault riffle. He had forgotten that the comm was open. A quick glance at the status report told him there was an intruder in the cargo hold.

"Not as much as you, by the sound of it," he smiled, alarmed to discover that an extremely inappropriate number of seductive subharmonics had stolen into his voice. It was disturbing, this lack of control, even more so than the idea that he was perfectly capable of thinking about the rhythms and noises of their lovemaking in the heat of the battle. Thank the Spirits for hard human ears! She probably caught none of it. "Be careful," he added.

"You too," the reply came, over the background of shooting and shouting and finally, an explosion. Garrus smirked: things always ended in explosions with Shepard. Oh yes, they did. He knew from some firsthand experience.

"We're sitting ducks out here," Joker said. "I'll have to try and lose them in the debris field. Hold on!"

A fair warning, as not three seconds later, the ship hit something massive and the shock rippled through everything inside, entering a sickening resonance with Garrus's vocal cavity. "Shit!" he grunted, holding on to the console with all his strength. The Normandy's kinetic barriers weren't designed for this kind of punishment and in the midst of the bewilderment, he tried to calculate how many hits it would take to strip the ship naked. Not many! More sudden maneuvers and collisions followed, and then the status stream blinked red again, announcing another intruder alert.

"That thing again," Shepard said. "Watch it! We've been spotted!"

Garrus could feel the exact moment when EDI took over the helm. They must have cleared the debris field.

"Need some help down there?" he said, only half-joking. After so many months of fighting back to back, it was strange and uncomfortable to witness Shepard engaging an enemy without his support. He scrolled through the security feeds until he found the cargo hold. It was chaotic. There was a drone in there, a huge, humming bumblebee with a great red eye shooting some kind of a particle beam at Shepard. They were playing hide and seek around the assembly line, with Thane sniping at the thing from the entrance, and Zaeed trying to aim the missile launcher at it, but holding back because Shepard was too near.

"Come on, Shepard. Move it," Garrus drawled.

"Fuck you." She was laughing, but hearing her say the word shot a spike of desire through him. Open channel, he remembered, and bit into his tongue before delivering a very personal reply, chuckling for himself instead. And just as he did, Shepard saw an opening and rolled into cover, allowing Zaeed to take the drone down.

"Nice work," Garrus said, then turned off the feed with some hesitation. He could watch her work all day. He could watch her all day, period. Preferably naked, now that he'd learned the true meaning of the word _soft_. Holding him. Enfolding him.

_God, that feels good._

_This?_

_Yes. Do _that_ with your hands._

He had to work hard to drive the thoughts away. Talk about a bad time!

"There it is," Miranda said, and Garrus turned his attention to the holo, streaming from EDI's visual sensors. "The Collector base."

"See if you can find a place to land without attracting too much attention," said Shepard, already back on the main deck, judging from the background noises.

"Too late," Joker said, and Garrus saw it too. A familiar signature. Too familiar. "Looks like they're sending an old friend to greet us."

The Collector ship took the shape of a yellow triangle on tactical, and just like before, it fired from the primary weapon without much ado. Joker danced around the beam, wrenching at Garrus's guts, but he was so high on battle-induced endorphins by now that he didn't even notice. His fingers were twitching above the weapon controls. Come on, Shepard, he urged from within. Give the word.

"Garrus," said the voice, and he relished the sound of it, because it shaped his name into a threat, an ultimate word of death. "Fire the main gun."

Time slowed down. He smiled and tapped into the interface. After so many months of careful adjustments and painstakingly precise calibrations, the controls of the Thanix cannons felt like a natural extension of his talons, the warm buzzing of their engines like the rippling of victorious laughter over the corpse of a fallen enemy, the thunder of their fire like the rumble in his chest when he'd cried out her name, the ultimate word of victory.

Something quite akin to arousal washed over his senses in an exhilarating rush as the yellow triangle blinked; it did not disappear at once, though. Joker's maneuvers threatened to dislodge him again, but Garrus held fast and delivered another solution, this one perfect, finally bringing about the explosion, the deserved release. He gasped out the overwhelming feeling of closure into the comm for everyone to hear, but it got drowned amidst their cheers.

Damn, that felt good.

But now EDI plotted the blast radius of the Collector ship in a luminous red, and for a good reason, as they were close, they were too close! The shockwave sent the Normandy flying and spinning out of control. Garrus didn't need to consult the status report to know that the mass effect core had gone offline, the sudden absence of its humming told volumes about just how hard they'd been hit. They collided with something massive, still spinning, and as the inertial dampeners gave, Garrus lost his grip of the railing and hit the bulkhead behind him. Damnedest things went through his head as he lost consciousness. Fruit, cards and hanar liquor. Heh. If only Shepard could hear him now, she'd…


	3. The Comm Room

**The Comm Room**

"Slap him."

Shepard? The world whirled around him in all the colors of the rainbow, and maybe two or three more.

"Hehe, gladly," said the last voice Garrus wanted to hear. He wanted to move out of the way, signal them that he was awake, that he was totally ok, he just couldn't see a damn thing through the lights and colors and couldn't move a muscle. But other than that…

"A-a-a! Grunt? Don't overdo it."

"Hehe."

No no no! Don't slap me! I'm fine! Garrus invested all his willpower into opening his eyes and there, results! Some of the fog cleared, and he saw the most unwelcoming silhouette of a huge krogan head hovering above him.

"He's awake," Grunt muttered, not even trying to hide the disappointment.

"Good. Help him to the comm room."

"Why me?"

"Because everybody else is busy being useful."

Why thank you, Shepard. Thank you very much. He tried to say so out loud, but his tongue was numb and limp.

"You're fine," Grunt said, thinking it a question. "She panicked when she saw you lying like some dead thing, hehe, and pumped you full of medigel. Come on."

She. Kasumi? Miranda? Could have also been Samara, he supposed, but then, Samara wouldn't have panicked. And what the hell did it matter anyway? His vision was swimming, and as Grunt picked him up like a blow-up toy, everything turned the wrong way.

Could have been Shepard.

That sobered him up a bit, although it was nonsense, of course. The sensation in his arms and legs was returning in wave after wave of pins and needles. "What's going on?" he managed to say.

"Crash-landed. We're gonna kick some Collector ass! Aargh!"

Garrus regretted asking and tried to push himself away, stand on his own. Didn't quite work out, but Grunt didn't let him fall.

"Eager to fight? Just like me! See, we're not all that different."

"Right."

By the time they reached the elevator, he felt reasonably confident in his ability to walk. The dizziness was a bit slower to retreat. They stopped by the bathroom, and after splashing his face and neck with the lukewarm water humans took for cold, Garrus finally began feeling half-way normal. If worse came to worst, he'd take a shot of stims. Not that he was looking forward to it; he'd barely gotten rid of the addiction he'd acquired on Omega. But this occasion was certainly deserving.

He glanced at the mirror and saw that there was something wrong with his reflection. Something was… slightly off. He scrutinized his face the way he used to do while interrogating suspects during his C-Sec investigations, and sure enough, the signs were there. His right eye, twitching again. Mandibles flicking on their own. He was lying to himself.

Must have been Shepard. Otherwise Grunt would have used a name.

Shepard panicked.

Shit.

#

There was enough excitement in the comm room to ignite a thermonuclear reaction. On the way down, Garrus had barely managed to extract the most important information from Grunt, who was unwilling to talk about anything other than the prospect of the battle ahead. There had been no fatalities. But the Normandy was in a bad shape. Nobody in the gathering seemed particularly concerned about that, though; they were all too busy talking at the same time, pointing fingers at the large scan of the Collector base projected above the meeting table, trying to outshout one another. Shepard was silent, leaning against the table on her arms, staring down. She glanced up when the door swished open and closed, but didn't look at _him_.

Sometimes Garrus considered his sharp hearing a blessing, other times, a curse. He tried to focus on individual voices. Zaeed was the loudest, trying to persuade EDI to repeat some calculation related to the amount of ordnance needed to blast through… Tali was arguing that some tunnel was too narrow, and Miranda was saying, well, _I_ could get through it, but we need a tech specialist in there and not… a stupid soldier like me, that's what you're saying, Jakob interjected, making Jack roll her eyes and lift her hands up in exasperation; fucking lunatics, every last one of you, she said, turning her back on the party, but Garrus saw her rub her palms and blow a soft breath over the blue sparks that had emerged. Can't we speak each in turn, Samara wanted to know, and Thane leaned towards her to say: humans – with that perfect mix of ridicule and disinterest that made it impossible for Garrus to hate him even though he sometimes wanted to. I could go into the shaft, Kasumi offered, but her voice was too quiet to compete with the rest. Wasting time, Shepard, said Mordin, waving his head at the chaos. Let's just go in and kick some ass, Grunt was urging. Come on Sheprad, just point me in the right direction, hehe. The robot… Legion… was standing in the corner and shone its headlight straight ahead. Which was just as well.

Garrus stepped closer to inspect the projection. The station was enormous. Their current location, marked in blue, was in the lower half of the cylindrical form; their objective, marked red, somewhere around the middle. It appeared impossibly distant; he checked the scale and shook his head. EDI had plotted two alternate routes and now he could see the doors that Zaeed wanted to blast out of the way, but apparently there wasn't enough ordnance aboard the Normandy to do it. A narrow ventilation shaft was highlighted in a suspicious yellow; it led to a redundant internal control cluster. He glanced at Tali; sure she could fit in. But it wouldn't be comfortable. He shook off a wave of chills; had he ever told Shepard that he was claustrophobic? The very thought of all those little pods the likes of which they'd seen on Horizon and on the Collector ship, shut tight, with _people_ inside, possibly _conscious_ people inside, made him claw into his palms. Thankfully, the shaft was definitely too small to accommodate _him_.

"Enough," Shepard said at last. She didn't need to raise her voice. Everybody stopped talking like one man, and Garrus smirked to himself: there it was, the familiar aura of control and confidence, emanating from her like a mass effect field, invisible and irresistible. There was no reason for concern after all; the moment of weakness was gone and forgotten.

Not forgotten.

"Tali, you're up," Shepard said and dipped her fingers into the haptic interface to enlarge the ventilation shaft.

"I won't let you down, Commander," Tali replied with a firm nod, though Garrus thought he could hear a tone of doubt through the filters of her mask. Good; blind confidence was almost as bad as no confidence.

"The rest of us will break into two teams and fight down each passage. That should draw the Collectors' attention from what you're doing."

"I'll lead the second fire team, Shepard," said Miranda. "We'll meet up with you on the other side of the doors."

There was a moment of awkwardness as eyes darted from face to face around the table. Jack was the first to speak. "Not so fast, cheerleader. Nobody wants to take orders from you."

"This isn't a popularity contest," Miranda said. "Lives are at stake. Shepard, we need someone who can command loyalty through experience."

Garrus shook his head. Experience… perhaps. Loyalty? Hah! Even the humans among the specialists kept up a healthy dose of mistrust towards Cerberus people. And as for himself, he found he'd be hard pressed to take orders from anyone other than Shepard.

_Stay still, Garrus._

_Shouldn't I…?_

_Don't move. Oh God. You're perfect that way._

His visor registered a 69% increase in his heart rate. Thank the Spirits for his hard carapace and ignorant aliens around him! The sudden surge of hormones and adrenaline that no stims could ever hope to match chased away the last aftereffects of medigel. Yes, sleeping with her now was a stupid, stupid, thing to do. But regardless of what his reason told him, he couldn't find it in himself to regret it. Not a single delightful moment of it.

All that went through his head and body in an instant while Shepard squinted her eyes at Miranda, then at Jack. And then she finally looked at him, wrenching at his guts as sure as Joker's evasive maneuvers. Her fluid features trembled, melting something inside him into a soft pulp.

Not gone either.

"Garrus will lead the second team," she said, and nobody but him could catch the overtone of dread in her voice, but he recognized it, he'd heard it once before already (an hour ago, it was only an hour ago!) and no matter how slight and well masked it was, it grated across his heart, threatening to split it in two. The weakness hung in the air between them like a standing wave, throbbing in the rhythm of their moans.

Then suddenly he knew the weakness for what it was and for the first time in his life, he was neither frightened nor disgusted with it. In fact, he was proud of it. It took courage to be weak. It took courage to be honest. She'd never lacked this courage; but he only found it now. He tried to communicate that through his stare, that and more, all the things that had to remain unspoken for now, and perhaps forever, he tried to communicate it all through that one nod that he was allowed to make in front of all the impatient, unknowing eyes urging them on. Complete devotion, yes, and complete confidence.

Shepard smiled at him a little, then bit into her lower lip and nodded back.

The rest of the meeting passed as if through a fog. As the team started leaving for the airlock in pairs, he took the opportunity to walk with Shepard at the rear. She didn't speak, and he didn't want to be the first one to break the silence. They were almost there when he felt her hand through his right glove and he gripped it in a desperate substitute for an embrace. Don't worry, Shepard, he thought. I'll make sure we get to do many more stupid, stupid, things together.


	4. Infiltration

**Infiltration**

Garrus led the way into the dark, cavernous tunnel. One last glance at the other team. She was turned towards him and even though she had her helmet on, he was sure she was looking right at him. He lifted an arm in salute and she mirrored the gesture. See you on the other side, Shepard.

Shepard, Jack and Legion were the Alpha team, with Miranda, Thane and Grunt as Beta. Garrus, Samara and Mordin were Gamma, and Zaeed, Jakob and Kasumi, Delta. At first, Garrus resented getting the stronger team, but then he remembered: Shepard's team had Shepard. He grinned.

Just as he thought that turning on night-vision was in order, he glimpsed lights in front and signaled Delta to find cover along the east wall while his team watched over. Then his earpiece crackled and Tali's voice came through some static.

"I'm inside the ventilation shaft, Shepard. It's hot in here, but it's clear, as far as I can tell."

"Second team, are you in position?" said Shepard.

"In position," Garrus replied. "Meet you on the other side of those doors."

At that, Zaeed signaled him to move forward, and the three of them ran along the west wall, finally crouching behind what appeared to be a huge exhaust pipe, protruding from the slippery tiled floor. The tactical map on the visor of his helmet told him the doors were straight forward, but he couldn't see them. It looked like they were inside a waste processing unit: man-sized pipes of dull grays and browns ran in bundles and met at junctions that would serve as good cover. Sounds of running liquids (water, Vakarian, it's just water; don't be morbid), dripping, boiling and bubbling came from all directions and although his suit was vacuum-sealed, he thought he could smell some gruesome stench. There were ladders up front leading to a grid of access platforms; a wealth of nice sniping positions, but it was a long climb and…

Sounds of shots came through his earpiece from Shepard's side, and not a moment after, rounds started flying around them as well.

"Wonder what took them so long," Mordin said, and then his pistol sang. The Collectors were descending on their annoying insect wings and, sure enough, taking positions on the elevated platforms.

"Samara, can you take those platforms down?"

"I will try."

"We'll cover you."

He peeked over the top of his cover, inhaled deeply to center himself, then got up and took aim. Bam! One down, clean shot right through the forehead, bless the new prototype auto targeting system he'd purchased on Illium and built into his rifle just before… Before.

Bullets were everywhere, some theirs, some the enemies' and it was hard to tell the difference with all the ricocheting off the tubes, probably monocarbon, though they looked like metal, and what the hell did it matter? Another deep breath, another venture into the open, he took a shot but the shields held and he kept his balance. Bam! Scratch one. Then Samara lit up like a nova and threw her arms in the general direction of the ladder and the thin supporting beams under the front section of the access grid. For a second, the lights and sounds of the gunfight were drowned by the biotic explosion. The ladder gave as if hit by a mining drone, and the beams started breaking pair after pair in a wave of creaking and screeching, topped by cheering by their comrades.

Cheering that must have sounded like screaming, because Shepard called in to check on them. "Report!"

"Garrus here," he said. As if she wouldn't know his voice. How silly. But he was too busy aiming at the Collectors, most of whom saved their skins thanks to the wings. Wings! Why couldn't he have a pair? "We're taking heavy fire, but we're moving forward."

Which was a lie, but only at the moment. He glanced at Zaeed, Delta had better cover, and Zaeed read his intention, signaling him to go, go, go! There was a momentary opening in gunfire, and he rolled out of cover, running for the closest junction. There were enemies to his sides, but Delta took one out, and Mordin took the other two with a well-aimed incendiary. Garrus slammed against the pipes and eeew! They were warm and wet with some sticky fluid. Water! Sticky water! He turned, aimed, shot. Right between the eyes...! I think. Samara laid fire from her assault rifle, and Delta bounded forward one by one. Jacob took some rounds, his barriers flickering in the shadows, and only then did Garrus realize he couldn't see Kasumi.

"Goto, where are you?"

"Up here," said the quiet voice, and although it was an extremely useless thing to say, he got his answer as a Collector who'd taken a good position on the knee of a pipe and behind another one just above their heads, screamed and fell forward, a ghostly form scurrying back into the shadows behind his back.

"Garrus, go!" Zaeed shouted, and Garrus sprang forward, sprinting for the next junction. Finally he rolled for it as his suit started streaming increasingly panicked warnings into his earpiece, taking shot after shot. Somewhere behind him, Samara did her thing again, lighting the chamber in eezo blues, the shadows of pipes dancing on irregular, moist walls. Why did everything have to be wet and slimy?

But now as a veritable carpet of fire formed over the chamber between their advancing positions and the Collectors ahead, Tali's voice came through again, barely discernible over the static. "I'm stuck," she said in a tone chillingly reminiscent of panic, and Garrus could relate, Spirits, could he relate! "Something's blocking the pipe. Looks like some kind of a gate!"

He recited a dirty soldier's prayer to thank the Spirits for putting him on the front line instead of inside that awful umbilical cord.

"Think I found the control switch," Shepard shouted over the barrage of gunfire coming from her end. But then she let out an unmistakable grunt of pain and Garrus felt like it was him, taking a round right into his gut.

"Shepard!"

"I'm fine," she groaned. "Tali, report!"

"The gate is open! Moving forward."

Which they were supposed to be doing too. He waved at Zaeed, then popped out of cover and took down another enemy. How many were there? As soon as he'd think they'd made a dent in their numbers, more would drop in from somewhere in front… and now, as he ran behind Mordin to their next stop, he finally saw it: the doors.

"Garrus here," he said into the comm. "Making progress." But just as he finished, he saw the entire Delta team look up as one man and when he followed their stares, he froze. There was a gaping opening in the ceiling, or rather, the chamber they were in was intersecting another, running vertically upwards into dense darkness filled with ominous twinkling. "Look out! Seeker swarms!"

"Swift action strongly advised," Mordin said, helpfully.

"We'll have to make a run for it," Garrus muttered to himself, but of course, everybody heard. "Kasumi, tactical cloak. Go and open that door."

"Sure thing."

The Collectors were coming from the vertical shaft, and in seemingly increasing numbers. And now the buzzing little insectoid drones were swarming around them. Delta moved into a new position, but no amount of gunfire could deflect the _army_ of enemies coming their way now. Garrus realized that what they'd fought through so far was probably just an advanced patrol. Spirits! There must have been _thousands_ of them in the base.

"We're in position," Shepard yelled through the comm, but didn't sound happy. She didn't sound happy at all. "We need this door opened, now!"

_Their_ doors slid open that very moment, Kasumi blinking into existence, taking a few rounds that rebounded off her shield in a cascade of sparks, then disappearing again. "Go, go, go!" Garrus barked, and everybody leaped into motion, not exactly what he'd call an orderly retreat, but Shepard was out there in need of his help and there was no time for flourishing his tactical genius. Bullets hit his shoulder, his back, his right thigh, and then his shields were gone but he couldn't pass the door before everyone else was in. Jacob was the last, going backwards and shooting, and then the doors finally swished closed, Kasumi stepping away from a console that had caught a small fire.

"Something's wrong, the door's stuck!" It was Tali, and Garrus only realized that she was in the same room when he heard her voice doubled. He took a quick survey of the situation. They were crowded in a round control post at the intersection of three large tunnels, and Shepard was behind the door to his left. Noises of battle were coming from the other side and his heart clawed into his throat. It was strange, to fear. He never feared. Not for himself. But now he signaled his team to take positions to the sides, and was about to urge Tali to hurry up, her delicate little hands dancing in the interface of the gate switch faster than his eyes could follow, when she made a victorious stab at it. "Got it!"

As soon as the doors started separating, Shepard and her team poured in, followed by a barrage of bullets. Garrus had only a quick glance at the chamber behind, well lit and blinking in yellow and green lights, and populated with a swarm of Collectors the likes of which they had left behind as well.

"Here they come," Shepard said. "Fall back!"

"Suppressing fire!" Garrus ordered. It was strange, to give orders in her presence. "Don't let anyone through that door!"

Was the door acting up again, or were they pressed so hard now that time started dragging, like in those awful, half-conscious hours of ultimate loneliness on Omega? Someone screamed, someone else grunted, and then he saw a missile, a fucking missile aimed straight at the opening which was reducing at a tantalizing pace. Shepard was standing next to him and a quick trajectory calculation told him all he needed to know. He'd take another missile in the face any day if it meant saving her. He rammed into her side, she was shorter than him by a head and had at most half his mass but it wasn't easy to dislodge her and for a split second he thought he wouldn't be able to but then he kicked her leg out and fell on top of her, the missile whistling an inch above his fringe. It went off, hitting the far wall, and then there was silence, for the door was closed and they were safe, at least for the moment.

He let out a deep sigh of relief, relaxing on top of her. He knew she could take his weight, even without the kinetic exoskeleton. The visors of their helmets rang as he rested his head on hers, and no, he couldn't be bothered to give even a passing thought to what the rest of the crew would say.

"You can get off me now," she said, a smile shaping her words in that special way that he'd recognize through any number of air filters.

I don't want to, he thought, but then he remembered that she'd been shot, and that maybe he'd been shot as well, and that there was a job to do, even if it did seem like there were other, much more pressing things at hand.


	5. Processing

**Processing**

Pods. He knew there would be pods, he fucking knew it. Like on the Collector ship, the giant chamber that ran the length of the base was packed with thousands upon thousands of pods and Spirits, oh Spirits, they seemed occupied, they all seemed occupied!

Garrus took a deep breath, pushing down the irrational fear that made his heart tick like a timer on a tactical charge. The chamber was so large and so devoid of anything other than faded fog and huge tubes running in complicated patterns, that they instinctively formed a tight group, walking closer and closer to each other and glancing about like a pack of pyjacks in the middle of klixen hunting grounds.

And the pods, oh Spirits, the pods were lining the walls like mutated cancer cells covering a diseased organ of some immense dying creature, shining their malignant lights, innumerable and sickening on some deep, basic level of pure, fundamental disgust. His stomach threatened to lurch and his spit turned to acid.

"Shepard, you need to see this," Miranda said. She was the first to separate from the others and venture towards the wall. Others followed. "Looks like one of the missing colonists."

"There's more over here," Mordin said. The group dissolved as everyone went to inspect the pods and Garrus felt exposed and ashamed, lagging behind. When he stepped close enough to see the humans trapped inside, panic started creeping on him. Suddenly his armor became horribly heavy, restricting and alien, and the helmet impossibly small. His eyes caught movement in one of the pods, and he approached it like hypnotized, each breath deeper and more labored. The others followed.

"My God," Shepard breathed. "She's still alive!"

Everyone gathered around the pod with a female human, dark-haired and dark-eyed, trapped within and seemingly sleeping. But then as they stared, she awoke to some unspeakable terror and started screaming. Only faint echoes were getting through to them from behind the glass but her white face became contorted in what seemed to be terrible pain.

She was burning. Gruesome chemical burns were spreading over her exposed skin at an unbelievable speed, leaving sizzling holes in raw, red meat, and before anybody could react, whole chunks of skin and muscle started dropping from her.

She was burning! As if somebody suddenly slapped him, Garrus jerked forward and attacked the pod like a desperate, mindless beast, clawing at the glass, kicking it, drumming with his fists but very soon it became clear that it was too late. The human was… consumed in a matter of seconds.

"Get them out of there!" Shepard yelled. "Hurry!"

Everyone moved to obey, but Garrus remained staring at the pod that was now dark and empty save for a sordid, shapeless splutter of blood and bile on the glass. The human had been liquefied and sucked down some invisible drain, the stuff of nightmares of every claustrophobic and finally the urge to breathe freely won over his better judgment. His hands were fumbled with the seals until he managed to divest himself of the helmet and for a second, he just stood breathing in the alien air, smells of chlorine and burned rubber flavored with a faint, sugary scent of decay reminding him of where they were and what they were supposed to do.

Somewhat relieved now that he could sense a breeze on his face, even if it was warm and rancid, he joined the others. Unsurprisingly, Miranda was the first to discover that the glass gave when pushed upwards and now they all worked frantically, the exoskeleton upgrades in their suits buzzing under pressure. One by one, the trapped humans were dropping out, heavy and limp from who knows what kind of sedation. His faculties slowly returning, Garrus recognized several members of the Cerberus crew, and realized that in his frenzy, he had released at least four of them himself. He latched onto the next pod, but it was empty. The next as well. He jogged along the wall, then stared forward. No more pods seemed to be occupied on that side. He turned to find Tali right behind him, scanning upwards with her omni. Why didn't he think of that?

"That's all of them," she said, her voice shaky. She looked at him, or so it seemed, but didn't comment on his disheveled state. "Let's go back."

#

They had rescued the entire crew and a dozen or so colonists. The others had been processed. That was the word dr Chakwas used. _Processed_. The notion of being inside the bowels of some horrid monster asserted itself over and over again and Garrus was reminded of it wherever he turned.

Of all the specialists, only Mordin and Grunt seemed unaffected by what they had witnessed. Even Zaeed kept his head down, assembling and disassembling his rifle in a fit of restlessness, and Shepard stood with her elbows squared and took in deliberate, overly even breaths, as if forcing herself to count them out. In rage or disgust? Garrus would have given his right hand to see her face now, alien as its fluid expressions often seemed to him even after years of friendship. Most of which she spent in… absence, but still. He was holding his helmet in hand, not quite ready yet to trust himself and put it back on, and when she turned in his direction, he shrugged to signal that no, he had no idea what the fuck had just happened either.

She shook her head at him, then put a hand up on her earpiece. "Joker?" Her voice was thick with suppressed emotion. "Can you get a fix on our position?"

"Roger that Commander," Joker replied through the open comm. "All those tubes lead into the control room right above you. The route is blocked by a security door, but there's another chamber that runs parallel to the one you're in."

"Too dangerous," Mordin said, flashing his omnitool. "Thermal scan suggests seeker swarms. Countermeasure ineffective for so many," and he indicated the specialists, rather obviously segregated from the rescued crew and colonists. Only Kasumi, Tali and Miranda stood among the helpless humans. Not only were they in no shape to fight, most seemed barely able to stand. They were a liability and Garrus wondered what Shepard would do about it. Returning to the ship with them was out of the question.

But now Samara stepped forward. "Shepard. I might be able to generate a biotic field to keep the swarms at bay. I won't be able to protect all of us, but I could get a small team through, if they stay close."

"I could do it too," said Jack. The usual belligerence was strangely lacking from her tone. "Any biotic could."

Shepard nodded. "Then the teams stay as they are. We'll go through the swarms." She turned to Garrus again. "You'll have to go through the main passage. We'll open the security door from the other side and meet you there."

"Understood, Shepard," he said, and hearing her name in his own voice sounded strange, dreamy, far removed from the urgency of the situation. Commander. He was supposed to say, Commander. But he couldn't. He wondered if he'd ever be able to, after… After.

"What about me and the rest of the crew, Shepard?" said Chakwas. "We're in no shape to fight."

"Commander?" Joker said through the comm. "We have enough systems back online to do a pick-up, but we need to land back from your position."

"We can't afford to go back," Shepard said, lifting an armored hand to scratch the top of her helmet. Garrus snorted. Of all the useless human gestures he'd been exposed to over the years, this one was the most ridiculous. And yet somehow endearing. He remembered his own helmet, swallowed hard, and put it on. Nothing happened. That was good.

"Kasumi," Shepard said at last. "You'll escort the crew back to the Normandy. Joker can use you there."

Good choice, Garrus nodded. Kasumi took a round in her thigh in the final firefight; high on stims and patched with medigel, she could walk and perhaps even fight, but certainly not at the peak of her ability, and Joker could certainly use her onboard the Normandy.

"Sure," Kasumi said and moved to rally the crew. They were good men, Garrus decided. Too good to be… _processed_, even if they were Cerberus people. Nobody deserved the fate of those poor colonists. He shook off the memory of the screams, it was too real, too fresh, like earth overturned for a burial. Come on, Shepard. Let's get out of here already.

"Tali," Shepard said, as if she heard his plea. "You'll go with Garrus in Kasumi's place. We've all got our assignments. Let's move out."

As the team left the pod-chamber behind and his armor started feeling comfortably warm again, Garrus huffed for himself. He'd never thought he'd be _relieved_ to march into battle.

* * *

><p>Apologies, dear readers, for the long delay and a short chapter loaded with Bioware dialog. I'll endeavor to write better and faster in the future. Also, I might put up a fluffy little one-shot set after <em>A Game of Cards<em> in a day or two. Thank you for support and the lovely comments. Keep them coming! :)


	6. The Long Walk

**The Long Walk**

This time Garrus was smarter. He insisted until Tali agreed to rescan this section of the station on a frequency slightly lowered for increased penetration; he offered to calibrate her omnitool himself, but she said no, in not so many words. She softened a bit when it turned out his instinct had been right, and allowed him to unjam her shotgun. An old friend, that weapon. Perhaps too old, but now was not the time to debate sentimentalities. The parallel chamber they were to traverse sported a grid of catwalks similar to what they had seen in the waste processing unit and Garrus wasn't about to waste the opportunity.

They climbed several stories up using service shafts before emerging above what appeared to be a long, cylindrical cavern going on farther than an unassisted eye could reach. Thick white vapor covered the floor ways below and the catwalks were slippery with condensation. There were suspicious orange lights pulsing at irregular intervals under the fog, revealing lazy wisps that ghosted even to where they were standing. Some two hundred meters ahead, there was a shielded chamber to the left. The shield seemed to be partially collapsed, though; its watery blues and the sharp ultraviolets only Garrus could see shimmered, blinking in and out of existence, and after some seconds of staring, created an illusion of directed motion: it looked like the shield was _flowing_ down in tattered, glowing rags.

"What is this place?" said Jacob.

"If I'm not mistaken, it's the heat recycling plant," Tali replied, flashing her omnitool to take readings before Garrus slapped her hand down with more force than he'd intended. But that was damn stupid.

"They don't know we're here yet. Let's not advertise."

"I'm sorry, Garrus," she said. "This place makes me nervous. I'll switch to night mode."

But Mordin was faster. "Scan complete," he said under his voice. "Bad news. Reading elevated levels of ionizing radiation. Safe here. But not there," and he pointed towards the shielded chamber. There was no way around it, if they were to get to the other side and meet Shepard. Garrus frowned.

"The heat processing unit is probably powered by some sort of an M-AM reactor," Tali said, arching her body over the railing for better perspective. "It looks like the shield can't draw enough power and the radiation is escaping through the gaps."

"When you say not safe," Garrus said, addressing the question to Mordin, "what exactly do you mean?"

"Irreversible tissue damage resulting in slow and painful death from radiation sickness. Not recommended."

There was a brief, motionless silence. Then Jacob shifted weight from one leg to the other. "I guess we didn't name it the suicide mission for nothing. I say we make a run for it."

Five shiny helmets turned to him as one, and although there was no way to tell what went on under them, Garrus had a pretty good idea, biting down his own smile. Jacob didn't lack courage, that much no one could deny. As if reflecting his thoughts, Zaeed patted Jacob's shoulder. Garrus could almost hear the veteran's voice: there, mate, there.

"Maybe we can reset the shield remotely," Tali said, already scrolling through the darkened interfaces on her omnitool. Garrus watched hopefully, but he could guess the outcome. Had they been able to tap into the internal controls of the Collector base, this whole mission would have been unnecessary. And indeed, after a minute of tense silence that seemed to stretch into an eternity, she waved her head and put her hands down.

"What if we just blow up the damn thing?" said Zaeed.

"Core collapse likely to cause antimatter containment failure," Mordin mused. "Cataclysmic consequences. Desirable result, but not the kind to increase our chances of survival."

At that the intercom broke open and Shepard's voice delivered a string of syllables barely understandable over the noise. "In po… Garrus, you… everywhere. The com… here they co…"

"Something's interfering with their comm," said Samara. Helpful, that. "Either the swarms, or the biotic field. Or both."

Biotic field. Garrus looked at her, an idea forming in his mind. "Samara. Can a biotic barrier protect from radiation?"

"Not from these levels. I could erect a field to fortify the shield, but I'm afraid it would fail in seconds. I am sorry."

"Don't be. We're all doing our best." He took a deep breath, making the decision. It was the only way. In the privacy of his helmet, he smiled. There was no fear: he had lived a full life, a recent development as it might have been, and if it was to end here, he would die with no regrets. "I'll go down and reset the shield manually."

"Garrus, that's crazy," Tali whispered. "You can't…"

"Not crazy" Mordin cut in, typing something on his darkened omnitool. "Didn't account for turian natural resistance. With personal shields calibrated to protect vital areas… survival theoretically possible."

"But if we mess with the controls, the Collectors are sure to find us," Jacob said.

"They'll find us anyway," Zaeed replied. "And I'm not hearing any alternative ideas. If none of you have anything useful to add, let's get going. I for one wouldn't want to keep Shepard waiting." He grunted. "Now _that_ would be a goddamned suicide."

If anyone laughed at that, they hid it well. Garrus looked around, starting to feel the grim excitement in the increasing pitch of his voice. "Right. Let's do this. Fan out to the sides," he gestured to the left and right, as the catwalks ran in two parallel lines along the chamber. "If we're attacked, I'll cloak, but you'll have to divert their fire from my position."

"Cloak will fail quickly due to radiation," Mordin said. "Shields as well. When that happens, make haste. Minimize exposure. Losing leader, always bad for morale."

Tali elbowed into Mordin's side, and some nervous chuckling ensued.

#

Garrus hurried along the wall. If he pressed close enough to it, he could avoid the wide beam of death shining invisibly through the failing shield. He'd configured his suit to beep at every detection, so he didn't need the numerical display on his visor to tell him he was already being bombed by way more than the comfortable 200 CPM of Palaven at noon. In fact, as he approached to some twenty meters of the reactor chamber, the beeping that had so far been frenetic but still discrete turned into a continuous high-pitched howl and he switched the damn thing off. It wasn't helping.

Ten meters now, and he stepped on something that crushed under his foot with as sound that made him think of a plastic part fallen off from machinery, but he couldn't afford the time to investigate. He hated the fog that pooled on the floor, reaching his knees. It felt like wading through a bad dream and he kept waiting for some Reaper-repurposed monstrosity to jump out at him and end his own brand of a suicidal run with a fucking heart attack.

Yeah, yeah, keep talking, smartass, he censured himself. CPM was in the order of five digits now and increasing feverishly with every step. He noted that his breathing had become very fast although he was far from tired. He stepped on another broken part: he was getting close. Something must have blown, damaging the shield, the flashing, blinking shield that was seriously going on his nerves now, leaving azure stripes all over his field of vision. Six digits. Seven digits. Stay, stay. Good boy.

Eight digits. Damn.

He was almost at the corner when the suit informed him that his kinetic barrier was depleted.

"Look… a big red… entrance," Tali's voice instructed through the radiation-induced noise. _Look for a big red button near the entrance_. Nine digits, and his heart started hammering in his throat like crazy. He didn't want to die, least of all falling apart on some hospital bed, not now that things had finally started working out for him. There had been a time when he… didn't care whether he lived or not, to put it mildly. But it wasn't like that anymore. It hadn't been like that for quite a while now and there was a human he had to thank for it. A human who gave him life, not once but twice now and he owed it to her to keep it and use it the best way he could.

Still, the only way led forward.

He reached the corner and his CPM display went into scientific format. Shit. A glance inside, and indeed, there was a fist-sized red button on the wall, staring back at him with unhidden malice. He took off and extended his sniper, waited a second for a gap in the shield, held his breath and slammed the button with the butt of the rifle, hiding as much of his body as he could on his side of the corner. But as the strike connected and he jumped back into relative safety, the hum of machinery he had hardly been aware of till now suddenly ceased, and with it the sickly bluish twinkling of the shield. Instead of solidifying, it was… gone. Cold sweat suffused between his plates.

"Hit… you have…it again!" Tali was screaming. _Hit it again, you have to hit it again!_ He leaped into motion and repeated the exercise. But when he struck the button this time, all hell broke loose: the shield sprang into life and threw him back into the middle of the chamber, the solid ceramics of his hard-suit taking the gist of the electric shock, but even while still in flight, he lamented the loss of his favorite weapon behind the blue curtain. And then as he hit the hard cold ground and dived under the disgusting fog, a pandemonium of shouts and curses started streaming through the intercom, superfluous and a bit over the top, really: he could see the enemy just as well as they could see him and the burst of rounds that he took in the back as he rolled away for cover that existed only in his wishful thinking, testified to that with mock certainty. But at least his suit was quick to recover, and he had shields, and kept breathing.

For now.

The voices yelling at him got lost beneath the hail of fire as his men started shooting back and he found himself lying under a veritable river of light trailing over the mist, but one voice was loud and insistent enough to get through the haze of confusion: "Cloak! Garrus, cloak! Cloak, damn you!"

Cloak? Yeah. He knew there was something he'd forgotten.


	7. Taking a Stand

Dear readers, once again I apologize for the long delay. I've been writing for NaNoWriMo and it's as exhausting as it is exhilarating. There will probably be no further updates before the end of November. Sigh.

Thank you all for reading, commenting, and being patient.

* * *

><p><strong>Taking a Stand<strong>

Things became chaotic the way they sometimes do in combat and Garrus was grateful for having such worthy people under his command because, by the Spirits, any other squad would have fallen apart in the confusion. The enemies were everywhere. Shepard and her men were shooting a curtain of fire over his team, bullets wheezing and grenades booming and biotics flaring. He glanced left and right one more time to make sure everybody was accounted for before stepping backwards and taking a stand by her side again.

"Keep them busy!"

"Get that door closed!"

"Fall back! Fall back!"

"Fuck! They're coming!"

A familiar situation, the door too slow to close, the enemies too many to suppress, the two of them holding the middle of the line with dying shields desperately sparkling, and a barrel of an alien weapon aligned all too well with the direction he was looking at. No way I'll live to tell about this one, he thought as it fired.

But he never took that shot.

Shepard did.

She leaped in front of him, faster than the bullet, Spirits bless her cybernetic body and her crazy, crazy mind. Garrus howled, dropping down on his knees to break her fall. The round went through her weakened shields like a glowing needle through butter and the shiny ceramics of her black armor looked bad, really bad, for the front plate had already been damaged earlier and now the cracks led down to a sizeable hole on her chest.

"No no no," he heard himself pleading. "No no no."

His whole world collapsed into that one point, that black hole in her center. On the periphery of his awareness, the doors finally closed and everybody gathered around them in a sudden, sepulchral silence. He yanked his helmet off, the other hand already pressing the wound. Human blood was dense and dark and he couldn't see how bad it was in the poor illumination, he couldn't see!

"Get away!" he growled at them, and they jumped off like vultures. The air was cleaner here than in had been in the previous chambers but when he sniffed, he was quite sure that the faint scent of alien blood in the air wasn't hers. A lonely beam of hope lit up and broke through the panic. "Shepard?"

"Unwarranted panic reaction," Mordin said from somewhere behind him after a huff that sounded almost offended. "Estimated extent of damage: concussion and bruising."

Sighs of relief rose from all sides and the circle of onlookers dispersed, leaving them alone. Shepard stirred in his arms and when Garrus looked back at her, her helm was gone too and her pale face was a study of confusion, eyelids flapping furiously, ginger lashes matted with tears. He had to smile at that. His human had hair growing in damndest places. But now she focused on him, making his heart skip a beat as a sudden, cold realization gripped him from within: he wouldn't survive losing her again. Not a good time for dramatic declarations, but he needed to say something, anything!

"Not a word," she wheezed as if she'd read his mind, then grimaced and pressed a hand to her chest. "Fuck, hurts like a bitch!"

Garrus nodded, then changed his mind and shook his head. He couldn't believe she'd taken a bullet for him. It was wrong, it was wrong on so many levels, it was what he'd feared from the moment he saw her trembling, naked on that bed, it was the weakness, now embodied for all to see, shaped as a hole in the middle of her chest, made real by the fact that she was ready to fucking _die_ for him and that, that wasn't acceptable. He wouldn't have it, not now, not ever again, and he had to tell her that, whether she wanted to hear it or not.

"Shepard -"

"Shut it and help me up."

His mouth clicked closed at the dry sound of the words and he paused. Not a good time for an argument either. At last he huffed out his dissent and gave her a hand.

She turned around to survey the situation, absently holding on to his arm. There were casualties this time: Jacob had taken a shot through the weak spot in the armor on the side, and Mordin was giving him a dose of medigel large enough to incapacitate him. Thane and Grunt had minor injuries and both Jack and Samara looked about ready to fall down from sheer exhaustion. Miranda was helping Tali seal a rip in her suit, and Zaeed was trying to get his damaged pistol back online.

Garrus turned up the tactical map on his omnitool. This was it: the central flyway in the heart of the station. They were standing on something like a dock, with a couple of detachable suspension platforms hovering on the edge of a misty abyss. But the most important item on the scan was definitely the growing number of red dots, amassing behind the door that he and his team had come through.

"Yeah," Shepard said in answer to his unvoiced thoughts. She turned to the platforms. "That looks defensible."

"Against _that_?" He gestured at the omni. "I don't think -"

"I'll only take two with me. Legion and Miranda, she still looks fresh. The rest of you will hold them back."

A sudden wave of panic quite alike to what he'd felt when he thought she was dead washed over him and he swallowed hard. "I'm coming with you, Shepard."

"No. I need to know my rear is clear, all right? You're staying here."

That was the Commander talking. Not just talking, giving an order. Shepard, _his_ Shepard, had a voice of her own, a voice that tasted like warmed sweet-berry liquor on an early winter evening, while the Commander spoke in tones of absolute confidence and stone-hard authority that he had never, ever, even considered challenging. The very idea made his plates stiffen with rebellious excitement.

He straightened up and tossed his head back in defiance. "No."

In the time it took him to formulate his thoughts into one of the shortest words in the languages of all space-faring species except the volus, Shepard had already moved on past the conversation and was applying a quick patch to the hole in her armor. A hack even by her low standards, but now she froze in mid motion and gave him a look tailored to turn his blood to vinegar.

"What did you say?"

"I'm coming with you, Shepard," he repeated, then shrugged. "I told you I'm no good at taking bad orders."

She blinked at him, apparently surprised to find that the voice was no longer working, that the look was no longer working. Really, Shepard? You didn't see that coming? Now that's just insulting. It could have been no more than a roll in the hay, no more than blowing off steam before a risky mission – but it wasn't, and they both knew it. They were both _there_. Things had changed, and sure, there was hardly any time to adapt to the new situation, but humans were supposed to be good at adapting, right? The thing he liked the most about Shepard was how she never danced around issues the way so many people did, which never failed to infuriate him, and if she started now, it would be a disappointment comfortably comparable to the possibility that he'd taken a lethal dose after all.

"You think it's a bad call?" she said. "You really _think_ so, with your _head_?"

"_You_ think with _your_ head and then tell me."

Her eyes darted to the others, who now appeared to be more or less ready, with Jacob clinging between Mordin and Legion, Thane sporting an eye-patch and Grunt wearing a fat roll of bandage on his forearm instead of the ruined gauntlet. Jack was still sitting on the floor, refusing to move, and Samara was wolfing down one energy bar after another like there was no tomorrow. And perhaps there wasn't. Sure, Miranda looked less worn out than the others, but there was a hint of exhaustion in her slightly slanted stance, and the way she switched her weight from one foot to another.

Garrus wasn't feeling tired; he felt great. The symptoms of the radiation poisoning would only start after several more hours, and by that time, it would all be over this way or another. He was the best of them, the strongest, the quickest, second only to Shepard; though it had been an awfully long time since that hierarchy was established and perhaps it needed a reevaluation in the light of recent events. He was her mate and he was not only eager and willing, but _obliged_ to stand by her in the end.

"Come on, Shepard," he coaxed, allowing the feverish emotions to spill into his voice. "Let's go out in style. You and I. How about it?"

She sighed, shook her head, then scratched it, making a mess of her hair. When she looked at him again, the Commander was gone. "You lost the Widow," Shepard said, _his_ Shepard. "Damn it, Garrus. That was a good rifle."

He didn't know what to say and just flicked his mandibles in an apologetic smile. After a pause full of breathing, like a clock, ticking, she took off her Volkov, extended the barrel, checked the ammo, and reassembled it before sticking it out in his direction. "Here. But I'll want it back, so."

Which was her way of admitting defeat, and something inside him gave a satisfying pop, like a misaligned joint falling back into place. He didn't even attempt to hide the deep exhale of relief, nor the wide smile of gratitude.

He took the rifle, weighed it in his hand. A fine weapon, but after the Widow, it looked and felt like a toothpick. "You think we could wait for another minute? I'd like to make some cali-"

An elbow in his midsection told him exactly what Shepard thought about his humor and the rest of the group looked on quizzically as their playful laughter echoed through the enemy base.


	8. The End Run

**The End Run**

Garrus had to invest all his restraint into allowing the Illusive Man to keep talking from his omni. Shepard was listening. Why was Shepard listening? She was pacing around and Legion was following her movement there and back again, his visual unit beaming in the smoky air like a beacon of a lighthouse. A cluster of wires above his hip was cut and spilling sparks, but he showed no signs of discomfort. Garrus had minor injuries, and a vague nausea kept reminding him of the pending symptoms of the radiation sickness, but for the moment he was all right. Shepard wasn't, though. Her left arm was dangling from her shoulder like a dead thing. The medigel had stopped the bleeding, but from the contorted expression on her face, smeared with blood and dirt, it was clear it didn't stop the pain.

So why was she listening? This place was clearly an insult to everything they had been fighting for, even without that monstrosity, that abomination that they had just taken down. Human fucking reaper. Garrus thought he'd seen it all when Sovereign possessed Saren's dead body in front of his unbelieving eyes, but no. The reapers were apparently capable of a much broader spectrum of perversions against nature. He blinked the blood trickling from the cracked browplate out of his right eye and glanced around, suddenly nervous. They should go and check if that thing was really dead instead of wasting time on pointless debates. Come on, Shepard. Tell the racist son of a bitch to fuck off already so we can fix you up and get the hell out of here.

"Shepard, you died fighting for what you believe," the Illusive Man was saying. "I brought you back so you could keep fighting. Some would say that what we did to you was going too far. But look what you've accomplished! I didn't discard you because I knew your value. Don't be so quick to discard this facility. Think of the potential!"

Garrus absently noted that his hands were curled into fists so tight that they put the fabric of his suit to the test, and now they tightened even further. There had been a time when his feelings for Cebrerus were above the freezing point. For bringing Shepard back. For bringing him back. But damn, they came here to destroy the Collectors, not to steal their fucking tech. Had that been a part of the deal not a single non-human would have ever boarded the Normandy. Reaper technology in the hands of the Illusive Man was an idea so profoundly bad that Garrus couldn't believe Shepard was considering it.

But of course she wasn't; not really. It became clear the moment their eyes met, and just as he gave her a stern shake of the head, she gave him that diabolic little curl of her lips that never failed to make his mandibles twitch in response.

"We'll fight and win without it," she said to the Illusive Man. "I won't let fear compromise who I am."

"Shepard, think about what's at stake, about everything Cerberus has done for you! You…"

Garrus cut him off and it felt like a trillion credits. "Come on, Shepard," he said. "Let's blow this thing."

She was studying the controls already. All they needed to do was set up a timed overload of the main reactor. Shepard looked at Garrus and indicated with her chin: she couldn't do it with one hand. "Ten minutes should be enough."

He dropped on one knee and got to work. His hands were shaking. It had nothing to do with the excitement and he bit into his tongue to try and steady them before she noticed. But now that he had the idea, he realized he was sweating as well. Shit.

With the overload ticking and the control panel locked, he started to get up, but then he heard the sound. His first thought was that he'd made it ten seconds instead of ten minutes by mistake, but they were still alive, so it wasn't that.

"Let's move," Shepard said, and her voice was too calm. She couldn't hear. Neither could Legion, or so it seemed. But before Garrus could warn them, the platform shook and they reached one for the other in the attempts to regain balance. He knew it. He fucking knew it. Of course the reaper wasn't dead: that would have been too damn easy.

A giant five-fingered hand appeared on the far edge of the platform and they darted for cover to the right, with Legion rolling away to the left, already extending his strange sniper rifle that Garrus would have to look at some day, if they survived. Shepard was aiming with her heavy pistol and her shot went straight for the humongous read eye, but it did nothing, nothing! It didn't even tickle it!

"Garrus, the Cain! Use the Cain!"

Right, right. His mind wasn't as clear it should have been. The platform wobbled again as the monster slammed a hand in the general direction of Legion's hiding place, but he managed to dodge and take another shot at the eye. Shepard was firing one confident round after another, and all the while, Garrus was fumbling with the magnetic claps on her armor, thinking, of all things, how he'd have been so much faster if only he'd had some _experience_. When the damn thing finally came off, its weight surprised him despite the countless hours Tali and he spent implementing the modifications from Mordin's chaotic schematics. He sure wished they'd had the time to test it but he wouldn't allow Shepard to detect his reluctance.

They were crouching with their backs to the sturdy control panel, shoulder pressed to shoulder. He said, "Cover me, Shepard," but she must have heard something else, because her face was suddenly in his face as she landed a fierce kiss on his mouth, licking away the sweat and the blood. His eyes shut on pure instinct and a bolt of unbearable longing underwent his entire body like electricity. Everything faded away for a blissful second… then returned in full force as the reaper's arm slammed just to the right of their position. Shepard went out of cover and started shooting with her good hand to attract the attention of the mechanic beast and Garrus started charging the Cain, praying to the spirit of the Normandy to bless the weapon into working without unpleasant surprises.

"Here goes nothing," Garrus muttered as the Cain spat out its deadly payload. The recoil almost toppled him on his ass. He had aimed it at the neck because it seemed to be the weakest structural point, but the damn thing was moving in an erratic pattern, and the missile was traveling so slowly that he had the idea it would have been quicker to sprint, holding it in his hands. With the corner of his eye, he saw that Shepard and Legion were standing frozen, watching, and the reaper was trying to prop its entire skeletal torso onto the platform. But it never made it. The missile struck true, exploding in a cloud of yellow, orange and red, blinding, deafening, but above all, beautiful.

Then it all went to hell. The platform slanted under his feet at an impossible angle and he lost footing, sliding on his belly into certain death in the unfathomable depths of the flyway. Shepard screamed and threw herself after him. There was no time to think about that, to think about anything. He was reaching for her, and she was reaching for him, and they were falling, falling together, going deeper, ever deeper towards the abyss. Her face was dark with terror. Her eyes were wet. Distress. Despair. It made perfect sense.

"Garrus!"

The touch of her hand brought him back to the present, the movement of her body sent his into a life-saving panic. She caught him. Somehow she caught him and broke the fall on the very edge. Hanging on her good arm, he blessed her cybernetic body again, for he had twice her mass even without the armor. He grabbed the edge to pull up, and she pushed back with her legs, dragging him over.

"Come on," she panted. They sprinted for the other side and the relative safety of the dock. Legion was there already, pointing wildly with his arm at something to their left and up. They paused to look, but what were they to do about it? The explosion had sent several platforms dancing around the flyway in a chaotic choreography and the one flying towards them on a collision course wasn't going to stop on account of their horrified, angry stares.

#

When Garrus awoke, it took him precious seconds to remember where he was. At first, he thought he was back on Omega: before him, there was a cavernous expanse glittering with stray lights and reflections; smoke in the air and a sense of immediate danger. He tried to move, but something heavy was resting on his back. Pushing up gave no results. He was weak. A moment of panic… but yeah, he could still wriggle his toes. Well, that was something.

Then he recalled the reactor and the ten minute timer and a fresh wave of panic washed over him. When he pushed up again, the weight came off easily, and he was surprised until he saw Shepard and Legion hovering over him.

"Can you walk?" said Shepard.

"Of course I can."

But the legs betrayed him and he would have fallen if not for the lightning reflexes and the merciless strength of their strange geth friend. Now Garrus remembered the heat recycling plant as well and something worse than fear twisted his guts. He would not allow his weakness to endanger others. To endanger _her_.

"I'm fine," he growled and brushed Legion's hands aside, standing up. He wasn't, not at all, and he knew it with a dreadful certainty which he hurriedly buried away. He was fine, he decided, and he was going to stay fine until she was safe. After a moment of agonizing reluctance, his body agreed to the deal and his legs held. "I'm fine," he repeated with a bit more confidence. "Let's get out of here."

They raced through the tunnels, but it was all a blur. Collectors were on their heels, shooting, and then there were also swarms. "Don't look back," Shepard kept saying. "Just run, run!" He wasn't entirely sure she was really saying that. Back on Omega, in the haze of his deep stim addiction and the nearly pleasant certainty of impending death, he used to hear her voice too. "Move it, mister," she'd tell him, and he'd find the strength to turn around that corner once more, snipe another. But the voice was different now. When it said, "Faster, Garrus," it said so in tones he hadn't known before. He wanted to hear them again, though, and that thought propelled him forward.

The Normandy was humming in the flyway, waiting, and Joker was standing at the distant hangar doors, cutting their pursuers off with a rain of cover fire. Legion was the first to jump and he made it into the ship with surgical precision. Garrus sprinted past Shepard, which was wrong, so very wrong, but he knew that he couldn't afford to lose momentum now. He threw himself over the edge with a roar and stumbled inside. By the time he stood up and shook the fog out of his senses, he expected Shepard to be inside already. Only she wasn't.

Garrus turned back to the hangar door just in time to see her make the leap. But the Normandy's inertial dampeners were still offline and the ship had drifted farther from the edge. He braced himself against the door, reaching as far out as he possibly could, but the ship kept moving and Garrus wasn't sure she'd make it, he wasn't sure!

He lost all sense of time. A couple of milliseconds or a couple of eons since she'd jumped? Didn't matter, for all his experiences in the battlefields across the Galaxy and the different, thought no less dangerous battlefields of his fucked up life, had already flashed in front of him, collapsing into a decision of pristine clarity: he would not lose her again. He would live or die with her.

Yeah. Definitely.

#

"Garrus?"

The alarm in her voice was breaking his heart but now that the hangar doors were closed and she was safe, his body reminded him of the deal. He sat down with a heavy thud. "Tired," he muttered, trying to sound normal.

"What's wrong? Are you injured? Talk to me, god damn it!"

"Just gonna… take a nap."

"Mordin, what's wrong with him?"

"Can't work here. Take him to med bay. Keep him awake."

"Hear that? Doctor says, no sleeping. Garrus? Garrus. Look at me. Look at me! That's an order, soldier!"

He opened his eyes and smiled at the fuzzy oval of her face. "Sorry, Shepard," he said, or thought he said, and then he trailed away.


	9. Promise

**Promise**

The elevator hasn't been this slow before, has it? She waves a hand in front of the control panel to see if there's a damage report pertaining to the elevator functions but when the status stream updates to more than ten pages of tiny, tiny letters, she just stares at it, helpless. The elevator is probably running just fine. She's high on stims and time doesn't flow the way it's supposed to. That must be it. She nods, and the reflection in the big mirror moves in response.

She glances that way. What a filthy, filthy reflection. The armor is fucked up good. She'll have to replace the entire chest piece and the left shoulder pad for sure – the rest may be salvageable, but god, she hasn't been this filthy since…

No, it's no good. There's simply no fuel left in her to keep up a coherent train of thought. She looks into the eyes of the reflection. Cry, she commands. The eyes just stare back. Cry, you cold, filthy, bitch. Nothing happens, of course. She's never been good at taking orders, even from herself.

After an eternity, the elevator reaches the loft. The change is disappointing. The elevator was at least _going_ somewhere.

She stands a long time outside the sensor range of the door to her quarters, trying to remember the state of affairs they left there before the mission. She remembers dropping the sheet before the door to the bathroom, but has no recollection of seeing, or not seeing it there later. And what of that bottle he brought? They didn't even open it. She has no idea where it went. An absent glance at her omnitool to determine the time and a failed calculation in her head later, she says, "EDI, how long since we went through the Relay?"

No response. The ship-wide audio system was probably one of the items on that ten page list. She taps into the comm and repeats the question.

"Seven hours, eighty three minutes, sixty five seconds," EDI replies through her earpiece, and Shepard laughs. There's a hysterical undercurrent to it, and that makes it even funnier. That's perfectly fine, however. It would be _very_ appropriate to break down now. She should do it. It's been such a long time since she'd last tried it, and it would be so much more fun now, than after Virmire. Normandy One was a much smaller vessel, with those impossibly thin bulkheads. She's all alone here and if she decides to break stuff, including but not limited to her own limbs, nobody is going to have the guts to come see what's going on because the only person with the guts… the only person… the only…

She swallows hard and steps forward. The door lets her in and treats her to a sight so much more frightening than the Collector Base and the Human Reaper. The sight of what had happened before. Unchanged! Untouched! Her heart skips a beat. The sheet is folded over the back of the chair. He must have done it while she was in the shower. And there it is, the bottle: on her desk. She even got the glasses out, she remembers now, before they… before he…

She picks up the bottle, then hurriedly puts it down: her hands are too filthy. Suddenly she snaps out of it and starts taking her armor off. The left arm hurts like a bitch, and so does her chest, right between her breasts. She looks down, but the bruise is not as bad as she thought it would be. The arm looks like shit, though. There's something disgusting about wounds coated with medigel: it sucks the life out of the skin. Leaves pallid, wrinkled tissue behind, like your toes when you soak in the bathtub for too long. It never fails to remind her of the husks and their translucent, liquefied flesh, and she wrinkles her nose at it.

Should she shower at once? She looks around and decides a pilgrimage is in order first, so she leans her back on the fish tank and closes her eyes, remembering his hard body pressing her. It happened only _hours_ ago and the memory surges through her like a shot of stims, going down through the nerves all the way to her ovaries, making her face burn. She touches it with ice-cold fingers and, hey! Something wet. She smears the tears with her dirty fingers and the moisture makes them almost black. Look at that.

A half-assed smirk stays on her lips all the way to the bathroom. She washes her hands and face and then her eyes catch on something hanging next to her towel. It's his shirt. How the hell did it get there? She turns to scrutinize it. Never did like all the cheery colors, but when she touches it, the texture takes her back and she feels his unbearable warmth under it and more tears ensue. It's perverse and she knows it's perverse, but she's glad that she can still cry. She wasn't sure. She was thinking that maybe Cerberus has gotten rid of all the unnecessary bits like, say, tear ducts. She used to have the same fears related to other nonessential parts of her body.

Unfounded. Entirely, entirely, unfounded.

Retracing her footsteps back to the tank, she sends her mind down the memory lane. The next stop was the couch. She pushed him and climbed on top of him and oh god, oh dear god, there is nothing she wants to do more than do _that_ again. Feel his hot skin between her teeth; hear him gasp with surprise and alarm and desire.

Then they went to the bed. She barely finds the courage to go and sit on it. The sheets are a wonderful, wonderful mess. In a few places, torn. She can't help but smile at that, the image of his hands, crumpling the thin fabric in total abandon, making her vision blur with tears. She kneels down, then lies, and buries her face in a pillow. It _smells_ like him and that finally does it.

"No," she whispers. "No no no."

She hugs the pillow in a deadly embrace and relishes the pain it sends through her bruised chest. You can't do that. Do you hear me? You can't leave me. The tears are flowing freely now, soaking the sheets. You can't. I won't have it. Do you hear me? I forbid it. That's a fucking order!

She strikes the bed with a fist. It's not fair. It's not fucking fair. The anger feels right, and the second she thinks it, it erupts from her like a fountain of blood. She strikes the bed over and over again and throws the pillows around, growling like a caged animal, with snot and tears trickling over her parched lips. But it's all a bit too ridiculous so she lands a hit into the hard bulkhead with her bare fist and leaves a _dent_. She leaves a fucking dent in the bulkhead and it breaks something inside her so that finally she can weep and sob and howl, and she does, she doubles over and fucking howls.

Please, she prays. Please, please, whatever you are. Please, don't let him die. I'll do anything. You know I mean that, and you know I can. I'm Commander fucking Shepard and I swear I'll do _anything_ if you let him live. If you have to take someone, take me. Please, please, take me. I'm a piece of shit! I'm a fucking zombie! I'm dead already so take me! Take me right now, just please, _please_, save him?

He's such a wonderful man, she explains to the higher force. Such a beautiful, beautiful man. And yet, life has been treating him like shit on every possible step of the way. And that's the worst of it, for Shepard. The idea that he could die before he reached his full potential, before he's been all that he wanted to be, seen all that he wanted to see. She can live with her own death, as idiotic as that sounds. She has seen it all, done it all. She doesn't give a flying fuck about her own fulfillment. But Garrus? He's never been happy.

And that sends her into a fit of desperate, hopeless spasms. She cries until she starts coughing and then she senses worse coming and scrambles for the toilet. Only acid comes out, sweet and yellow and burning. She hasn't eaten for a whole day at least.

Vomiting calls her back to her senses, and after flushing, she throws away the sweaty underwear and steps into the shower.

#

She finds dr Chakwas in the med bay with Garrus.

"Talk to me, Doc," she says, all her false confidence loaded into the words. "What's it gonna be?"

"Commander," dr Chakwas replies, looking up at her over a datapad. "Let's talk outside?"

"No." She draws near the bed, hesitates for a second, then places her palm on his forehead. It is cold and wet. She runs her hand down his scarred face, and she has to bite the insides of her cheeks to stop herself from crying again. "He's a soldier. He can take it, whatever it is." And so can I. I think.

"All right. We can treat the tissue degradation. But even if he lives – and the chances of that are very… slim, to say the least – he's facing a lifetime of health problems. This kind of exposure… it can't end well, Commander."

Shepard comfortably absorbs what she wants to hear and deflects everything else. Fuck the health problems. She's _died_ and she's still walking around – it can't get worse than that, right? The main thing is, dr Chakwas didn't say there was no hope. And that's enough for Shepard. She's already planning a vacation on Bahamas for the two of them, colorful drinks in tall glasses and suspicious glances they'd counteract with a pair of well balanced heavy pistols. "Can you wake him up?"

"Oh, Shepard," dr Chakwas says and puts down her pad. She makes her way over to where Shepard is standing, squeaky shoes and all, and places a hand on Shepard's shoulder. "He's in a coma. There's nothing we can do."

"People wake up from coma all the time," Shepard says, and it's a threat rather than a question. People _do_ wake up from coma all the time. Right? _Right?_

"Not turians."

The vacation fantasy crashes down like broken glass and the sharp shards shoot right through Shepard's heart. "What does that mean?" she says. She knows it's not the doctor's fault, the poor woman has been through enough herself, but she can't help it. "What the fuck does that mean?"

Dr Chakwas' face crumples as she shakes her head. "If he doesn't wake up in a couple of hours…" She lets the words trail off.

#

At some point, dr Chakwas must have gone out, because when Shepard looks around, there's nobody in the med bay except Garrus and her. The lights are low, and the hum of the medical equipment is the only thing she can hear – other than her breathing, and if she focuses enough, his breathing. Her hand has been resting on his collar the whole time, and now she moves it to caress him. She should talk to him. Did dr Chakwas instruct her to, or is she making it up? No matter. She should. She can feel it in her guts. And still, the words remain clogged in her throat. Why is it so difficult? Talking to him has never been difficult. But for some reason, she needs to draw on her deepest sources in order to make her lips move.

"Garrus?" she whispers. It is strange, it is too strange, hearing her own voice in what she already perceives as an empty room, and she hates herself for it. She seeks out unplated skin on his neck, to feel his warmth, to feel his heartbeat. He's still here, she convinces herself. He's still here and maybe you can keep him from going away, so don't you dare be a fucking coward now, Shepard.

"Garrus."

She runs her hand down his chest, then both hands; she pulls the cover off so that she can feel his body under her hands and the tears spill down her cheeks anew. It hasn't been a whole day since they slept together, since she found completion, perfection, pressed under that chest and she wants to feel that way again, oh god, oh dear god, she's never wanted anything so much. Still she can't say it out loud. Why can't she say it out loud? And of course the main question is: _what if he dies, and never hears her say it out loud?_

"Please don't die," she manages in the end. "Garrus. My beautiful turian. Please don't die."

Her voice betrays her on the last words and she chokes. She bends over and lays her head on his chest. The alien, compound meter of his heartbeat is unbelievably comforting. As long as there is life, there is hope. She nods to herself and repeats it, the one maxim she's been living with her entire life. As long as there is life, there is hope.

"You can't die," she says now, with more confidence. "You can't leave me to fight all this shit by myself. I need you."

It's selfish, it's egoistic, but it's the naked truth and she knows that Garrus prefers the truth over the pretense of a higher purpose. It is why she loves him: no pretense. It's all out there, with him, and this courage, this fantastic audacity, to put it all out there and say, this is who I am and you can all go fuck yourselves if you don't like it – that is why she loves him. She sighs and traces his arm all the way down to the limp hand. Warm and dry, and the memory of the touch of it on her skin brings about a surge of emotion.

"Do you hear me, Vakarian? I need you to recover, because I can't make it on my own."

"Sure you can."

Shepard jumps away and slams into the empty bed behind her. "Garrus?"

"Not as stylishly, of course," he adds, in a quiet, weak voice, but it's real, she knows it's real because his mandibles flare out in that perfect asshole grin of his.

The world explodes in white light and the next thing she knows, she's all over him. She touches everything, kisses everything, and doesn't give a fuck about her tears dripping over everything. When she finally stills, looking in those startlingly blue eyes, he lifts a hand to touch her cheek and smear the tears with a silent question.

"It's nothing," she says through her full nose, trying to smile, but her lips are trembling. "I'm just so glad to see you!"

She turns away. He's already seen tears several times too many, but she can't let him see her weep. Some limits are not to be crossed, even in a situation like this. She laughs and cries at the same time, and it takes her a minute to come down and look at him again, only to find him propped on his elbows and eyeing the IV needle taped to his right forearm.

"Oh no, you're not going to walk around sick like the last time," she warns, but her hand is on his face already, stroking, touching, suddenly she can't have enough of him. "You're going to spend a good week in bed. That's an order."

Garrus lifts an eyebrow at her. "This bed…?"

In the way of an answer, she lands a soft kiss on his scarred cheek, then another on his mandible, and finally a longer one on his mouth. He gives in and lets her push him back on the pillow.

"Oh, Garrus, you gave me such a fright," she confesses after a while. "_Never_ do that again."

"Never is a strong word, Shepard."

"There are no words too strong for you and me."

He peers into her eyes, all serious. There's something about his gaze, when he's all serious: it becomes heavy, like an actual weight bearing down her shoulders. Shepard stands still and takes it.

"Together?" Garrus asks, and if she thought his stare could not get heavier, she finds she was mistaken.

Shepard clears her throat and stands tall, as if to salute. Finding the courage to put it all out there turns out to be easier than she expected, and she replies, "Forever."

They regard each other in solemn silence for a long time before Garrus nods, then relaxes back into the pillows. He looks around and huffs through his nose. "Can I at least have my omni?"

* * *

><p>~ The End ~<p>

* * *

><p>Final notes from the author:<p>

This is it! It's been one hell of a ride and I'm glad I went for it. Thank you, dear, dear, readers. I couldn't have done this without your support. Or at least, not as stylishly.

One last request: **please don't post end-of-story-spoilers in the reviews. **Not sure it's doable, but... try? Thank you, and see you in other stories, or so I hope!


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